Spencer Hill Press
July 9, 2013
297 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from Book Depo/or Amazon
On the night seventeen-year-old Jeremy Glass winds up in the hospital with a broken leg and a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit, his secret crush, Susannah, disappears. When he begins receiving messages from her from beyond the grave, he's not sure whether they're real or if he's losing his grip on reality. Clue by clue, he gets closer to unraveling the mystery, and soon realizes he must discover the truth or become the next victim himself.Breaking Glass turned out to be a lot different book than I was expecting. It was more complex, both in terms of the plot, the characters and their relationships than the synopsis would lead one to expect. What I thought it was about was already enough, what it turned out to be was even better.
To give much more of the plot wouldn't be fair (or much fun) for anyone who's going to read it, so I won't. What I will say is this: when Jeremy ends up in the hospital, intoxicated and with a severely injured leg, he learns that his friend -- and crush -- Susannah has disappeared.
He thinks he knows what happened the night of his accident and who was there but soon, others' accounts have him second guessing himself.
Then, when Susannah starts requesting -- from, possibly, beyond the grave -- that he solve her disappearance or murder, Jeremy starts to question his sanity.
All of this happening while a bit of a soap opera is unfolding around Jeremy. Rockton is a small town with a lot of secrets; many of them surrounding Jeremy's family, friends and their past.
Even the things that seem simple grow much more complex as other characters put their spin on things. Or as tales -- or rumors -- from the past come to light.
Everything that happens to Jeremy is handled excellently. It isn't overdone, which could easily happen with everything that happens to him and/or he does to himself, no is it underdone. Despite his experiences that are so different from much of what most will experience, he's easy to relate to.
The character who was the closest to a second main character -- at least in the 'Now' sections -- didn't feel quite as developed. There were times when we learned more about her and it seemed something was coming, but it never quite got there. There may have just been too much plot involving Jeremy, the mystery and in the 'Then' sections for there to be that connection with her, also.
With such a deep, intense plot, Amowitz finds a great balance: keeping the plot creepy, the characters' melodrama unfolding, and having a possible new interest for Jeremy. All the while leaving readers guessing at just what will happen in the end - how the mystery will be solved and how everyone will fare.
Rating: 8/10
thank you to Spencer Hill Press for the arc for review
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